International Morse Code International Morse Code For learning Morse code it is recommended that you do not try to remember dots and dashes, but remember the Morse code sounds instead. Letter CL, Going off the air ("clear") -.-..-.. DO, Change to wabun code -..--- KN, Invite a specific station to transmit -.--. SK, End of transmission (also VA) ...-.- I am ready to copy QRV? Are you ready to copy? QRL The frequency is in use QRL? Is the frequency in use? QTH What is your location? Notes If the duration of a dot is taken to be one unit then that of a dash is three units. The space between the components of one character is one unit, between characters is three units and between words seven units. To indicate that a mistake has been made and for the receiver to delete the last word, send ........ (eight dots). The prosigns are combinations of two letters sent together with no space in between. The other abbreviations and Q codes are sent with the normal spacing.

I am a father and foster carer a principal research engineer at the IT Innovation Centre a Woodcraft Folk district coordinator a salsa teacher and in my spare time I write and maintain this web site © Copyright Stephen C. Phillips, 2015 AA9PW FCC Exam Practice » The Morse Code symbols and sounds The Morse Code symbols and sounds The Morse Code The popular view of Morse code (aka CW, Continuous Wave) as a collection of dots and dashes is the first thing one must forget when trying to learn morse code! For this reason, you will not find the usual table of letters and their corresponding dot/dash equivalents. What you will see is a table of the letters and their sound equivalents. It is far better to learn to associate a letter with a sound from the beginning, rather than trying to translate the sound into a letter via dots and dashes. The table below shows the sounds for the letters, numbers, punctuation and some of the common procedural signals often used in amateur radio contacts. The Letters of the alphabet A International Morse Code International Morse Code For learning Morse code it is recommended to use this reference, but if you like, the dots and dashes are available too.

Letter CL, Going off the air ("clear") dah-di-dah-di-di-dah-di-dit DO, Change to wabun code dah-di-di-dah-dah-dah KN, Invite a specific station to transmit dah-di-dah-dah-dit I am ready to copy QRV? Are you ready to copy? QRL The frequency is in use QRL? Is the frequency in use? QTH What is your location? Notes If the duration of a dot is taken to be one unit then that of a dash is three units. The space between the components of one character is one unit, between characters is three units and between words seven units. To indicate that a mistake has been made and for the receiver to delete the last word, send di-di-di-di-di-di-di-dit (eight dots). The prosigns are combinations of two letters sent together with no space in between. The other abbreviations and Q codes are sent with the normal spacing. I am a father and foster carer a principal research engineer at the IT Innovation Centre a Woodcraft Folk district coordinator a salsa teacher and in my spare time I write and maintain this web site © Copyright Stephen C.

Phillips, 2015 Morse Code Morse Code This page lists of the various symbols in the Morse Code group. Morse code is a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment. The International Morse Code encodes the ISO basic Latin alphabet, some extra Latin letters, the Arabic numerals and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals as standardized sequences of short and long signals called "dots" and "dashes", or "dits" and "dahs". Because many non-English natural languages use more than the 26 Roman letters, extensions to the Morse alphabet exist for those languages. Each character (letter or numeral) is represented by a unique sequence of dots and dashes. The duration of a dash is three times the duration of a dot. Each dot or dash is followed by a short silence, equal to the dot duration. The letters of a word are separated by a space equal to three dots (one dash), and two words are separated by a space equal to seven dots.

The dot duration is the basi Edit this group SYMBOL ADDED TO MORSE CODE | CJOnline.com SYMBOL ADDED TO MORSE CODE Posted: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 By The Associated Press Morse code is entering the 21st century -- or at least the late 20th. The 160-year-old communication system now has a new character to denote the "@" symbol used in e-mail addresses. In December, the International Telecommunications Union, which oversees the entire frequency spectrum, from amateur radio to satellites, voted to add the new character. The new sign, which will be known as a "commat," consists of the signals for "A" (dot-dash) and "C" (dash-dot-dash-dot), with no space between them. The new sign is the first in at least several decades, and possibly much longer. Among ITU officials and Morse code aficionados, no one could remember any other addition. "It's a pretty big deal," said Paul Rinaldo, chief technical officer for the American Radio Relay League, the national association for amateur radio operators.

"There certainly hasn't been any change since before World War II." The change will allow ham radio operators to exchange e-mails more easily. That is because -- in an irony of the digital age -- they often use Morse to initiate conversations over the Internet. "People trade their e-mail addresses a lot," said Nick Yocanovich, a Morse code enthusiast who lives in Arnold, Md. Morse code uses two audible electrical signals -- short "dots" and slightly longer "dashes" -- to form letters, numbers and punctuation marks. Created in the 1830s by Samuel F.B. Morse, who invented the telegraph, the electronic signaling system spread across the world, and until the past few decades, it was used widely by the public, industry and government. "It was the beginning of the Information Age," said Gary Fowlie, Chief of Media Relations and Public Information for the ITU, which has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. When Morse died in 1872, more than 650,000 miles of telegraph wire circled the globe. By the early 20th century, Morse messages were being sent wirelessly, via radio.

Perhaps the most famous Morse communication is the international distress signal S-O-S. It consists of three dots, three dashes, and three more dots. But with the proliferation of digital communications technologies such as cell phones, satellites and the Internet, Morse code has lost its pre-eminent place in global communications. "There's really no reason to use it anymore," said Robert Colburn, research coordinator for the History Center of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Today it's largely the province of ham radio operators, including 700,000 in the United States. While not all of them communicate regularly in Morse, almost all are familiar with it. Some ham operators wouldn't mind more changes to spice up the language. While Morse code has a period, a question mark, and even a semicolon, it offers no simple way to articulate excitement. "I was hoping they'd add a character for the exclamation point," said Yocanovich, who is active in the International Morse Preservation Society. "It expresses an emotion that's difficult to get across any other way." Related Searches Secret Language: Cryptography & Secret Codes | Exploratorium The Secret Language Ron Hipschman When you were a kid, did you have a "Captain Midnight" decoder ring?

With it, you could send messages to a friends that no one else could read. Or perhaps you remember using special symbols to write notes to your "squeeze" in class. If the note was intercepted , your teacher, could learn nothing about your romance. In more serious uses, codes and ciphers are used by our military and diplomatic forces to keep confidential information from unauthorized eyes. Businesses also send data that has been encoded to try and protect trade secrets and back-room deals. After all, you wouldn't want your competitor to know that you were about to acquire their company with a leveraged buy-out. The study of enciphering and encoding (on the sending end), and deciphering and decoding (on the receiving end) is called cryptography from the Greek (kryptos), or hidden and (graphia), or writing. If you don't know Greek (and not many of us do) the above letters could be a form of code themselves! Although the distinction is fuzzy, ciphers are different from codes. When you substitute one word for another word or sentence, like using a foreign language dictionary, you are using a code. When you mix up or substitute existing letters, you are using a cipher.

(I told you the difference was fuzzy, and you can combine codes and ciphers by substituting one word for another and then mixing up the result.) We'll concentrate on ciphers. For a cipher to be useful, several things must be known at both the sending and receiving ends. The algorithm or method used to encipher the original message (known as the plaintext). The key used with the algorithm to allow the plaintext to be both enciphered and deciphered. The period or time during which the key is valid. By way of analogy, to get into your home you would put a key in a lock to open the door. This process (the use of a key and a lock) is the method or algorithm. Now this method only works if you have the proper key to stick in the lock, and your key will be valid only as long as you are the resident of the particular abode. The next resident will have the locks changed to a different key to make sure that you cannot enter even though you may know the method. The selection of the above three items - algorithm, key and period - depend on your needs.

If you are in the battlefield and are receiving current tactical data, you want an algorithm that makes it easy to decipher the message in the heat of battle. On the other hand, you must also assume that your opponent has intercepted your enciphered message and is busy trying to break it. Therefore you must choose an algorithm (method) that is complicated enough so that by the time your opponent figures it out, the data will be worthless. The easier the algorithm you choose, the more often you will have to change the key that unlocks the code - if you want to keep your enemy in the dark. Ciphers are broken into two main categories; substitution ciphers and transposition ciphers. Substitution ciphers replace letters in the plaintext with other letters or symbols, keeping the order in which the symbols fall the same. Transposition ciphers keep all of the original letters intact, but mix up their order. The resulting text of either enciphering method is called the ciphertext. Of course, you can use both methods, one after the other, to further confuse an unintended receiver as well. To get a feel for these methods, let's take a look at some ciphers. Substitution ciphers and decoder rings We use substitution ciphers all the time.

(Actually, substitution ciphers could properly be called codes in most cases.) Morse code, shorthand, semaphore, and the ASCII code with which these characters are being stored in inside my Macintosh are all examples. (ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, just in case you're interested.) The only difference between these and the spy codes is that the above examples are standardized so that everybody knows them. The Captain Midnight decoder ring (which is an "encoder" ring as well) allows you to do a simple substitution cipher. It usually has two concentric wheels of letters, A through Z. You rotate the outside ring and substitute the letters in your message found on the outside ring with the letters directly below on the inside ring (see diagram). Here, the algorithm is to offset the alphabet and the key is the number of characters to offset it.

Julius Caesar used this simple scheme, offsetting by 3 characters (He would have put the "A" on the outer ring of letters over the "D" on the inner ring if he had owned a Captain Midnight decoder ring.) The word "EXPLORATORIUM" thus becomes "HASORUDWRULXP." Such a scheme was easily broken and showed a certain level of naivete on Caesar's part concerning the enemy's intelligence. Substitution cipher wheels Click here to download a copy of the cypher wheels (12k PDF). Copy and cut out the two wheels. Place the smaller wheel on top of the larger wheel and rotate them so your "key letter" on the small wheel is beneath the "A" of the large wheel. Now you can encipher your plaintext and pass it to your friend who knows the proper key letter. You could make your ciphertext a little tougher to decode if you threw 26 pieces of paper into a hat, each with a letter of the alphabet written on it, drew them out one at a time, and put them side-by-side under a normal alphabet.

The result might look like this (I just used the order of the keys on my keyboard, so you might call this a "Qwerty" code): Plaintext letter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Ciphertext letter Q W E R T Y U I O P A S D F G H J K L Z X C V B N M You can construct a secret message from the above table. Every time you see an "I" you would substitute the "O" beneath and so on for the other characters. The message "Meet me after school behind the gym," would read "DTTZ DT QYZTK LEIGGS WTIOFR ZIT UND." Word lengths - especially the short words - give great clues as to the nature of the code (see frequency charts). To help conceal your message, ignore the spaces and break the message up into equal-sized chunks. Five letters are customary in the spy biz, so your message comes out like this (Note that an extra "dummy" character "M" is added at the end to make it come out with a 5-letter group.

Your recipient should have no trouble with the extra character.): DTTZD TQYZT KLEIG GSWTI OFRZI TUNDM Another popular system called a diagrammatic cipher, used by many children in school, substitutes symbols for letters instead of other letters. This system is, in essence, the same as the letter substitution system, but it's easier to remember than 26 randomly picked letters. It uses the tic-tac-toe boards and two X's as shown below. The same secret message as above, using the line-shapes that surround each letter (and including a dot where needed) becomes: Even though it looks like undecipherable outer-space alien text, this would take an arm-chair cryptologist only about 10 minutes or less to figure out. Why? Given enough ciphertext, certain patterns become obvious. Notice how often the empty four-sided box appears: six times out of a total of 29 characters or about 20% of the time. This would immediately indicate that the empty box was almost certainly the symbol for "E," the most frequently used letter in English. Other letters can also be determined by their frequency and by their association with other nearby characters (see "Frequencies").

Almost all substitution ciphers are open to this kind of analysis. Francis Bacon created one of the more interesting substitution ciphers. He used two different type faces slightly differing in weight (boldness). He broke up his ciphertext into 5 character groups, each of which would represent one character in his plaintext. Depending on which characters of the group were bold, one could determine the plaintext character using the following table (* stands for a plain character and B for a bold character) A=***** G=**BB* M=*BB** S=B**B* Y=BB*** B=****B H=**BBB N=*BB*B T=B**BB Z=BB**B C=***B* I=*B*** O=*BBB* U=B*B** D=***BB J=*B**B P=*BBBB V=B*B*B E=**B** K=*B*B* Q=B**** W=B*BB* F=**B*B L=*B*BB R=B***B X=B*BBB Our same secret message as above would appear thusly (Bacon's bold and plain characters were less obvious than those below): To be or not to be that is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them? To decipher, we just break the characters into groups of 5 and use the key above to find the plaintext message. M E E T M E B E Tobeo rnott obeth atist heque stion Wheth ertis H I N D T H E G noble rinth emind tosuf ferth eslin gsand arrow Y M A F T E R S sofou trage ousfo rtune ortot akear msaga insta C H O O L seaof troub lesan dbyop posin gendt hem? Transposition ciphers Going back to your school days, oo-day oo-yay emember-ray ig-pay atin-lay? Pig-latin is a form of transposition cipher where the original letters are kept intact (albeit with the addition of the suffix "ay"), but rearranged in some way. Going back way before your school days, to the 5th century B.C., the Spartans used an interesting transposition cipher called a scytale.

The scytale utilized a cylinder with a ribbon wrapped helically around it from one end to the other. The message was written across the ribbons, and then unwrapped from the cylinder. Only someone with an identical diameter cylinder could re-wrap and read the message. The scytale depended on a piece of hardware, the cylinder, which if captured by the enemy, compromised the whole system. Also, the receiver could lose or break the cylinder and therefore lose the ability to decipher any message. It would be better if the method were completely "intellectual" and could be remembered and used without resorting to a physical device. Since both the sender and receiver of a transposed ciphertext must agree on and remember this algorithm or method for enciphering and deciphering, something easy would be nice. Since geometrical figures are easy to remember, they serve as the basis for a whole class of transposition ciphers. Let's put our message into the shape of a box. Since there are 29 characters, we'll add a dummy ("O") to make 30 and write the message in a six by five box.

M E E T M E A F T E R S C H O O L B E H I N D T H E G Y M O We can now transcribe the message by moving down the columns instead of across the rows. Once again we'll break the characters into groups of five to give no clues about word sizes. The result looks like this : MACEH EFHHE ETOIG TEONY MRLDM ESBTO The real variety begins when you realize that you don't have to write your plaintext into the box row by row. Instead, you can follow a pattern that zig-zags horizontally, vertically or diagonally, or one that spirals in or spirals out (clockwise or counterclockwise), or many other variations (see diagram below). Once you've put the text in the chosen form using one route, you can then encipher it by choosing a different route through the text. You and your partner just have to agree on the reading route, the transcription (enciphering) route, and the starting point to have yourselves a system. These systems are called route transcriptions. Here's our message again. The reading route spirals counterclockwise inward, starting at the lower right corner (left diagram).

The transcription route (right diagram) is zig-zag diagonal starting at the lower left corner. The ciphertext becomes: EAMTN FTDIE EHOTE RHMEM BYESC GLOHO To decipher, you fill the in box following the zig-zag route and read the message using the spiral route. Another type of transposition cipher uses a key word or phrase to mix up the columns. This is called columnar transposition. It works like this: First, think of a secret key word. Ours will be the word SECRET. Next, write it above the columns of letters in the square, and number the letters of the key word as they would fall if we placed them in alphabetical order. (If there are duplicate letters, like the "E", they are numbered from left to right.) 5 2 1 4 3 6 S E C R E T M E E T M E A F T E R S C H O O L B E H I N D T H E G Y M O Now write the columns down in the order indicated by the numbers.

The resulting ciphertext looking like this: ETOIG EFHHE MRLDM TEONY MACEH ESBTO As you can see, this is just a different arrangement of the previous ciphertext, but at least it isn't in some regular pattern. We could have easily made it a little more difficult by filling the square following a more complicated path. We could also use a geometric shape other than a rectangle and combine substitution and transposition. The only problem that might occur is that the deciphering may become so complicated that it will remain a secret at the receiving end forever! Come to think of it, she never did meet me behind the gym...

Frequencies Order of frequency of single letters: E T O A N I R S H D L C W U M F YG P B V K X Q J Z Order of frequency of digraphs (two letter combinations): th er on an re he in ed nd ha at en es of or nt ea ti to it st io le is ou ar as de rt ve Order of frequency of trigraphs: the and tha ent ion tio for nde has nce edt tis oft sth men Order of frequency of most common doubles: ss ee tt ff 11 mm oo Order of frequency of initial letters: T O A W B C D S F M R H I Y E G L N P U J K Order of frequency of final letters: E S T D N R Y F L O G H A R M P U W One-letter words: Gardner, Martin. Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing. New York, NY: Dover Publications Inc., 1972. A wonderful, fun, and easy to read introduction to codes and ciphers. Smith, Laurence Dwight. Cryptography, the Science of Secret Writing. New York, NY: Dover Publications Inc., 1943.

A good account of codes and ciphers with many historical examples. Konheim, Alan G. Cryptography: A Primer. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1981. A highly technical (and mathematical) book on more modern methods of code making and breaking. Gaines, Helen Fouché. Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and their Solution. New York, NY: Dover Publications Inc., 1956. The title says it all. Morse code Morse code Morse code is a method for encoding text into a series of dashes and dots, that can be sent (transmitted) by means of sound, light or radio waves, and that can be decoded be a skilled listener without special equipment. The system is named after the American artist Samuel Finley Breese Morse [2] who co-developed an electrical telegraph system at the beginning of 1836 [1] . In his original design, Samuel Morse had only planned to use numbers (0-9).

The code was later adapted for more general use by Alfred Vail, who added letters, special characters and punctuation marks to the code, in such a way that the most frequently used characters (in the English language) were represented by the shortest codes (e.g. the letter 'e' is a single dot). In the early days, morse code was used to send short text messages over long distance by means of the so-called electrical telegraph via (long) wires. The transmitting operator used a morse key (switch) to turn the electric current on and off in the rithm of the morse codes. At the receiving end, the electric current engaged an electro-magnet, that would 'click' in the rithm of the morse signals. In most cases the codes were directly written to paper by attaching a pen to the electro-magnet, resulting in the original series of dots, dashes and spaces. The image below shows the word MESSAGE printed by a telegraph in morse code on a paper strip. This way, a message could be recorded, even if the operator was not present at the receiving station. The dots and dashes were later translated into text again.

Some operators were trained to recognize the 'clicks' of the electro-magnet, translate them to text and write them down directly. In the 1890s, morse code began to be used for radio communication as well, as it was not possible to transmit voice at the time. When used over radio, the dots and dashes are represented by a series of short and long tones, often called dits and dahs by the operators. As morse code requires limited bandwidth, it was ideal for transmission via Short Wave Radio (HF). A skilled morse operator could still 'read' the text even if the signal was noisy and disturbed. Morse code was heavily used for (secret) transmissions during WWI and WWII. The image above shows former Dutch radio interceptor Louis van Erck using a wartime Type 3 Mk.II (B2) spy radio set, during a demonstration at Museum Jan Corver in November 2008, as part of the exhibition Secret Messages . Being an experienced radio operator, Louis is capable of smoothly adapting his sending speed to the skills of the operator at the other end. Morse code remained popular during the major part of the Cold War, but was eventually replaced by other transmission methods.

In the Navy, morse code was used as a backup measure for many years, with the well known SOS ··· --- ··� being internationally recognized as an emergency signal. Today, morse code is no longer officially used, but it remains relatively popular with radio amateurs (HAMs), although it is no longer mandatory for a HAM Radio Licence is most countries, including the US and most European countries. For most people it is rather easy to learn . Direction Finding (DF) As it takes relatively long to send a message in morse code, transmitting stations, such as WWII clandestine agents , were prone to detection by means of Direction Finding . During WWII, both the Germans and the allies developed sophisticated methods for such Direction Finding (DF) . In the later part of WWII, but more predominantly during the Cold War, this was partly solved by the development of the so-called Burst Encoder , a device that could record a message in morse code and play it back at very high speed. This shortened the transmission significantly and reduced the risk of detection and direction finding. At the receiving end, the message was recorded (e.g. on a wire-recorder), played back at much lower speed, and written out again.

The image on the right shows an example of a Cold War burst encoder that was used by the USSR. Such devices generally consisted of a recording device (the actual burst encoder), a storage medium (often a cassette of some kind), and a play back device (the burst transmitter). They were used extensively by the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies, but also by the Western Allies. The US also used them during the Vietnam War, to make efficient use of the limited frequency space. Expanded Latin alphabet In the International Morse Code, each character of the basic ISO Latin alphabet is represented by a a series of dots and dashes, sometimes called dits and dahs, in such a way that the most frequently used letters (in the English language) are represented by the shortest codes. The table below shows the Latin characters that are most commonly used (by radio amateurs) today. Dichotomic chart The branched table below shows how the morse code of each Latin character is constructed. The letters with the highest frequency (i.e. the letters are used the most in English) are higher up in the table. A left-branch represents a dot, whilst a right-branch represents a dash. Special characters and punctuation marks are at the bottom.

Click the image to download it as a PDF file. Russian Although the Russian language requires a differerent character set (Cyrillic), the same morse mode as for the Latin-oriented languages is used. The characters that have a Latin equivalent (e.g. the Russian letter 'Б' is the Latin letter 'B') use the same morse code. As the Russian alphabet has more characters (33) that the Latin alphabet (26), some additional codes are used. The table below can be used as a reference. Click the table to download it as a PDF file. Learning morse code When learning morse code, one first has to memorize the basic alphabet, starting with the letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9). While the tables above can be used as a guide, some people require a visual aid when trying to memorize the morse characters. The diagram below is an example of such a visual symbolic aid. Click the image to download it as a PDF file. Over the years, many methods for learning morse code have been developed.

Some methods start with sending and receiving at a very slow speed, which is then gradually increased over time, whilst other methods claim that is is better to start sending the characters at the target speed, with long spaces in between them. The spaces are than gradually reduced. Timing Although morse code can be transmitted at any given speed, the relative timing between the various elements is fixed. Generally speaking, morse code consists of five elements: a dot (one unit), a dash (three units), an inter-element gap (one unit), a gap between letters (three units) and the gap between words (7 units). The diagram below shows the timing for each of the elements. In the above diagram, the text 'MESSAGE TO' has been used as an example. It is also possible to represent morse code by a constant stream of digital bits (ones and zeros).

If we define a tone as a '1' and a silence as a '0', the above example would produce the following bit-stream: 111011100010001010100010101000101110001110111010001000000011100011101110111 © Copyright 1989, AG Reinhold, Cambridge, UK. Crypto Museum, November 2008. Further information One Way to Learn Morse Code One Way to Learn Morse Code There on your chart adjacent to every radio NavAid symbol is the small box that gives you the (usually) three letter identifier and the relevant frequency, and the cryptic (exactly!) dot-dash symbols that represent the Morse Code transmission for that device. Here is one more thing to thrash around with while navigating cross-country when your attention ought to be outside the airplane or elsewhere.

When you ident a NavAid, you have to either find the symbol on the sectional or, more likely, find the place where you copied it during your pre-flight planning. Unless, of course, you know Morse Code! Then you just listen to the blips and beeps and amaze your friends by saying "Yup, B-D-R, just like its 'sposed to be", and going blithely on with your aviating. "But", you say, "I've looked at the Morse alphabet and I could never remember that A is dot-dash and B is dash-dot-dot-dot and C is whatever. There's no pattern to it and it's too hard to memorize just by brute force." Relax. I'm here to let you in on a secret. There is a pattern to it and it's easy to memorize using a couple of simple mnemonic tricks (I did it in about two hours). The Revenge of Etian Smurd Think for a minute about telephone Area Codes in the context of the old rotary dial telephones (remember those?). Back when Ma Bell (remember her?) assigned the Area Codes, it was considered desirable that the areas with the most subscribers should have the quickest codes.

By quickest, I mean the ones that used the fewest dial pulses. So New York City got 212 (five pulses), L.A. and Chicago got 213 and 312 respectively (six pulses each), and Idaho got 208 (twenty pulses). The point is that Morse works the same way. The letter that appears the most often in English language text ("E" is the New York of our alphabet) gets the quickest Morse identifier: dot (or dit or ï¿½ (your choice). "T", the Chicago of letters, gets dash, dah or -. And poor "Q", the alphabet's own private Idaho, gets - - ï¿½ - . There have been many analyses of the frequencies of use of the letters in the Roman (i.e., our) alphabet. As you might expect, cryptanalysts find them fascinating. Many of them disagree in some detail or other, but it is possible to reconstruct the pattern that the original Morse encoder (ol' Sam himself) was probably working with.

Let's assign point values to the Morse encodings of the letters of the alphabet using the following scheme: one point for a ï¿½, two points for a -, and one point for a space. So "E" ( ï¿½ ) gets 1, "T" (- ) gets 2, "A" (ï¿½ - ) gets one each for the dot and the space and two for the dash or 4 in all, and "Q" (- - ï¿½ - ) gets ... let's see, 2 each for the three dashes is 6 plus 1 for the dot plus 3 for the spaces ... 10 points! The whole alphabet looks like this: A J Y Q Care for a sip of ETIAN? Many cryptanalytic analyses of letter frequency include E, T, I, A and N among the most frequently used letters, and therefore the Morse Codes for these are the simplest: E ï¿½ I ï¿½ ï¿½ A ï¿½ - N - ï¿½ To commit the first group to memory, note that the simple codes are clear and sparkling and light, like a bottle of Etian Water (sic).

Simplest first, the "E" is just a dot and the "T" is just a dash. The "I", the only "3 pointer", is two dots and the "A" and "N" are a dot and dash together. As is most often the case, the dot comes first and moves "through" any dashes, so "A" is dot-dash and "N" is dash-dot. What in Blazes is a SMURD? I don't know either, but if you can retain the nonsense word "smurd" in your memory, you have the key to the second group: S ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ M - - U ï¿½ ï¿½ - R ï¿½ - ï¿½ D - ï¿½ ï¿½ This is really easy. First off, SMURD starts with "S" and the two Morse letters everyone knows are "S" (ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ) and "O" ( - - - ). You're just going to have to remember that "M", the other 5-pointer, is two dashes, but that's not too hard.

The U R D trio is another case of "the dots moving through the dashes. "U", the first one, has the dots up front. For "R", a dot moves to the rear, then for "D", the second dot joins it. (Now, if it works better for you to envision the dash elbowing its way up to the front of the line, I don't care. Whether your glass is half empty or half full, it's all the same to me.) What time is it, Doctor H.? Group III, the 7 point codes, is arranged in honor of the consonants (less one) in the name of Dr. Stephen Hawking, the great British astrophysicist. That's HaWKiNG. (We already did N in Group I, so let's not bother here): H ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ W ï¿½ - - K - ï¿½ - G - - ï¿½ The "H" is gotten using the simplest way to make 7 points - the four dots and the three spaces between. The W K G trio is a variation on the theme initiated by the U R D group.

(In fact, the most trouble I have is avoiding getting "R" and "K" mixed up.) Again, the dot at the head of the line makes its way to the back as you go from "W" to "G". Remember, "U", "R", and "D" are permutations of two dots and a dash while "W", "K" and "G" are rearrangements of one dot and two dashes. Now for the Fat Ones The codes are becoming more complex as we go down the alphabet. In fact some of them are absolutely fat and flabby. So I'm going to call Group IV the Overflab Group. That's OVerFLaB. (Hey, I'm sorry! If you come up with a better mnemonic, please let me know.) O - - - V ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ - F ï¿½ ï¿½ - ï¿½ L ï¿½ - ï¿½ ï¿½ B - ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ As I said earlier, everybody knows "S" and "O". Here's "O": the famous three dashes.

And, believe it or not, "V" is the third Morse letter most folks are familiar with. Think of the first four notes of Beethoven's "V"th Symphony: you know, "dit-dit-dit-dah". The quartet of "V", "F", "L" and "B" form a lovely pattern as dots detach themselves from the initial grouping and move to the right (or maybe it's that pushy dash again with the sharp elbows). In any event the Overflab Quintet has a big fat "O" as it loudmouth lead and a harmonizing backup quartet. Look at them. It's actually pretty! Papa X-Ray Zulu Charlie Okay, so I gave up. The motley collection in Group V, the 9-pointers, just didn't suggest a mnemonic to me so I sat around saying "Papa X-Ray Zulu Charlie" to myself until it was engraved a half-inch deep in my cerebral cortex. Again, if you can think of a mnemonic that works, let me know.

P ï¿½ - - ï¿½ X - ï¿½ ï¿½ - Z - - ï¿½ ï¿½ C - ï¿½ - ï¿½ All of these codes are made up of a pair of dots and a pair of dashes but the arrangements are a bit arcane. I'd suggest that you tie the codes to the letters in pairs. The "X" is just the "P" turned "inside out". And the "C" is like the "Z" except the dots are apart instead of together. One thing you might try is remembering the name "Anna Minn". (In my mind, she's a mysterious Eurasion beauty in a Smilin' Jack comic strip.) She brings all of the codes in this group of Morse letters. For example, "AN" = "ï¿½ -" + "- ï¿½" = ï¿½ - - ï¿½, which is P! And so on using "NA", "MI" and "NN". Watch Out for the Candlestick!

Group VI, the 10-pointers, has us saying "Jack, You're Quick!" (You remember the dude who vaulted over candlesticks?) J ï¿½ - - - Y - ï¿½ - - Q - - ï¿½ - As befits letters with 10 point totals, the codes are loaded with dashes and have only one dot. Just as you'd expect, the dot starts at the beginning of the group and "precesses" through toward the end. Happy Encoding and Decoding So here's the whole array, in the order just discussed, for you to memorize, crib from, laugh at or whatever: E

Question: In Morse Code what is the symbol for the letter E
Answer: A dot